


Endgame

by Cassandraic



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Study, Confessions, Established Relationship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25081045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cassandraic/pseuds/Cassandraic
Summary: What happens to the game board when the Player stops playing? Can the pieces forgive Her?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 43





	1. Long Shots

**Author's Note:**

> Please note tags. GoodOmens!God is abusive, and has left Her mark on many characters.

“What would you do, if you could do all the miracles you wanted, any size miracle?” Aziraphale repeated.

The angel had studied endless books on what the humans called _phonetics_ to try to understand the sort of sound that Crowley made next—partly palatalized, rather nasal, vowelly but not a vowel, not just syllabic but multi-syllabic, that somehow ended somewhere a bit south of his velum. Even the International Phonetic Alphabet had no symbol for this sound. Perhaps, Aziraphale thought, human phonetics was not the answer. Perhaps herpetological anatomy? At long last, however, the sound resolved into words. “I don’t know, I’d just leave it all alone for the most part really?”

“As you do now.”

Crowley emitted another instance of _that_ sort of sound, this one punctuated with glottal stops. “Well, it’s not that I’ve ever minded a little meddling, angel, but you’re talking—“ He tilted his head upward, just for a moment.

“I suppose I am, at that,” Aziraphale mused. “Very Lord Acton of you, my dear.”

Crowley scuffed one boot along the edge of the path, leaving a divot or two in the gravel. “Just don’t trust it, me,” he muttered. “I know what abusing miracles looks like at my scale. Don’t you, angel?”

“Heaven never exactly hesitated to tell me,” replied Aziraphale with heavy irony.

“They told you miracles to save yourself from discorporation were _frivolous_. They’re wankers. But I know you know.”

“Well, yes, I suppose I do. Do the least that gets the job done, don’t hurt anyone, and avoid — out-of-control repercussions.”

“That’s the word,” Crowley approved. “Repercussions. Stirred up some repercussions back in the garden, not knowing what I was doing —” Aziraphale nodded ruefully — “saw what happened, didn’t do it again. But that’s at our scale, right? When it’s —” The demon flung one scrawny arm out at the landscape. “I don’t know any more. So a general policy of ‘leave it the heaven alone’ seems like the thing.”

“We didn’t, though. I didn’t, in the end. I took the shot.”

They passed three separate benches before Crowley said, “Exception proving the rule. We were both flailing then.”

“It also assumes you’ve got the rule correct,” said a flat American voice from the fourth bench. Angel and demon turned toward the bench in equal startlement. The voice belonged to a long-faced, too-pale individual in a tunic and capris that did not particularly flatter a solidly middle-aged frame. “And that there even is one.”

Blue eyes suddenly wide, Aziraphale took a long step in front of Crowley. Without his conscious intent, both his arms lifted away from his sides, fingers splayed. “M-m-mother,” he squeaked. “It’s —” He brought his treacherous voice under control and down an octave. “It _has_ been a — a long time.”

“Yes,” she said. “Too long.”

“Not ’alf long enough,” muttered the demon under his breath as he stepped to one side and set one hand on the angel’s shoulder to calm him down. 

“No? But you asked Me questions, Crowley. Asked me to show you a Great Plan.”

“Well, You didn’t.”

“I didn’t have one to show you.”

From angel and demon alike came a shocked countertenor “What?”

“I played games with the universe. I thought it was funny.”

Aziraphale stepped in front of Crowley and raised his arms again, this time for his solid corporation to block the demon’s furious runup. It wouldn’t do for a low-ranking demon to back-of-bench-pin the Almighty, wouldn’t do at all. “Dear me,” the angel said with his most bastardly blandness, “I’m terribly sorry for the mention of Lord Acton, then. Sensitive subject, I quite see that, perfectly awful of me.”

“I don’t think it’s funny now.”

“Yeah? When’d You stop?” Balked of his attack and unwilling to overrun his angel even if he could, Crowley contented himself with the most venomous words he could find. “Killed too many kids? Ripped the wings off too many angels? Oh, but tastes change, maybe the Horsepeople weren’t doing it for You any more, when may we expect the new ones? Prejudice, Panopticon, and the second coming of Pestilence?”

“Crowley, no!” Aziraphale protested, his anxiety surging. “You mustn’t!”

“You started it, angel,” Crowley muttered, subsiding.

“I stopped after I killed My Son,” She said. “He wouldn’t talk to me, after. I let things go, then. I watched a bit, but nothing was amusing any more. Not Heaven, not Hell. Earth went its own way, and I did not play with it.”

Crowley loosed an ugly crack of laughter. “So much for ‘ineffable.’”

“I wanted you to know,” She said. “To understand.”

“But why didn’t You just tell us, Mother?” Aziraphale asked, wringing his hands. “I asked and asked and — well, I don’t mean to be rude, I’m sure, but — You never answered me!” The angel’s voice was doing that swoopy rising thing it did when he was distressed. Crowley hated the swoopy rising thing. “Not a sign, not so much as a single word!”

“I was ashamed,” She said.

“So You bloody well should’ve been,” hissed Crowley. She only nodded, expressionless. “What do You want from us now?”

“What do you want from your plants, Crowley?” She asked.

She seemed amused at having sparked _that_ sort of sound from him. “My plants? My _plants_? Is this even the same conversation? I tell them exactly what I want from them, which is more than You ever did for us!”

“Unforgivable, that’s what I am,” She said, without irony. “I cannot expect to receive your forgiveness. I can only confess to you, and now I have.” She stood up from the bench and walked away from them, back the way they had come.

The angel and the demon regarded Her retreat in dumbfounded silence, until the angel at last found his voice. “Mother?” The second syllable cracked wide open.

She turned toward them slowly, but came no nearer. “Yes, Aziraphale?”

“I think, on the whole — well, I mean to say — it’s not as though I would ever compare myself to — it would be utterly presumptuous of me —”

“Angel, please, will you just _try_ to lay hands on a point?” Crowley groaned, knowing as he did that the angel’s anxious verbal dances could go on longer than every gavotte that had ever gavotted laid end-to-end.

“Really, Crowley!” Aziraphale wrung his hands, then made himself lower them to his sides as he turned his attention back to Her. “I have not been a perfect son to You, Mother, though I did truly try,” he said, with gentle childlike earnestness that smote Crowley’s susceptible heart harder than a flaming sword. “Because of that, I do appreciate that coming here to say what You have said must have been a terrible wrench. I fear I cannot forget what You have done. I — I — I cannot even forgive, I wouldn’t know where to begin, the sheer enormity of it, Mother!”

She nodded again, waiting. Crowley folded his arms and gave Her his best slit-eyed yellow glare, by way of making clear his complete inability to forget and intransigent disinclination to forgive.

“But I can listen,” said the angel. “I — I can try to hear You out, Mother, and understand.” Abruptly he broke their locked gaze, his hands clasping and unclasping once more. “Oh, I’m being ridiculous, I’m only a — of course You would never — why did I even say that?”

Crowley loosened his arms and set one of his own hands over the angel’s two, to still them. “‘Cos you’re better’n Her, angel,” he said. “You always have been. But you don’t have to do this. Our side doesn’t owe Her a tarnished tuppence glued to the ground in front of Tesco.”

“Oh, but grace is never what we’re owed,” the angel answered. “Or I’d have Fallen, and you never would.”

“Half true,” She said, with an absolute _bastard_ half-smile that must have been where the angel got it. “You would extend Me grace, Principality?”

The angel’s face and stance firmed, and he met Her gaze again even as one of his hands shifted to hold Crowley’s properly. “I would, yes.”

Every now and again, a word got stuck in Crowley’s throat until he had said it four to eight times. This time it was, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, waitwaitwait _wait_. Angel, this is not even safe! You can’t trust Her! She’s _not on our side_!”

“I’m not on anyone else’s side,” She said, tilting Her head slightly.

Crowley strangled the _oi, shut it, You_ that tried to escape his teeth; the angel mustn’t come to grief because he couldn’t resist mouthing off to Mother. “Aziraphale,” he said urgently instead, “She can do anything to you. Anything She wants. Doesn’t even have to snap Her godly little fingers. You heard Her; She’s got no rules. You’re less than a Mesopotamian kid to Her. You can’t risk it! Why would you risk it?”

Aziraphale rose up on the balls of his feet to kiss his solicitous demon gently. “You always are the one for imagining consequences, darling,” he said. “I appreciate it ever so much. Do you remember my sword, Crowley?”

 _That_ sort of sound made another command appearance. Whatever Crowley’s capacity for imagination, Aziraphale’s capacity for _non sequiturs_ regularly trounced it. “… yes?” was the eventual bewildered upshot.

The angel turned toward Her. “And do You remember how I — I lied to You about it?”

“Yes. I was amused. It was the first little defiance, after the great one… the first thread out of place. For such a different reason, though. I did not understand the reason for a very long time.”

Aziraphale gave Her a shaky smile before he spoke to Crowley. “This feels… like that did. Like something I can’t not do, Crowley. And — and She had every opportunity to punish me for that, but She never did.”

“I let it run, that thread. I did not know what would happen, but I am not sorry for what did.”

“Thank You, Mother,” said Aziraphale. “I choose to trust that.”

“And if I don’t?” Crowley spat.

Aziraphale gave one of his fussy little exhales, and turned to Her. “I don’t wish Crowley to be distressed by our little chats, Mother,” he said. “Could you please promise him we will come to no harm from them?”

“I promise,” She said to Aziraphale before turning Her level gaze on Crowley. “And even you must admit that when I make a promise, I keep it — no rules-lawyering.”

Crowley stuck his hands in his pockets. “Nor the world doesn’t get hurt either,” he snarled.

“I will not harm the world because Aziraphale and I speak together,” She agreed. “I wish to do this precisely so that the world does not come to grief because of Me.”

“And this doesn’t happen in my flat or his bookshop or the Ritz or St. James’s Park or Tadfield or Alpha Centauri or any other place that’s ours.”

“Oh, but what if I invite Her?” Aziraphale protested.

“No, angel.” But the angel turned his most devastating pout on Crowley, who sighed and conceded, “Not unless we both invite Her.”

The pout melted into the angel’s even more devastating sidelong glance. “Thank you, dearest.”

“Yeah, well, you owe me.”

“I always pay my debts,” acknowledged Aziraphale, amping up the sanctimony until even Crowley had to smirk.

“Next time, perhaps, we can discuss how I might pay Mine,” She suggested mildly. “Until then, Aziraphale. Farewell, Crowley.” She strode off and was lost to their sight in the afternoon sun.

Crowley wound his arms tightly around his angel and held on. “Well,” he said. “That was a thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This happened when a lot of different metas collided in my head. I don't pretend it makes any sense. 
> 
> Lord Acton was a 19th-century British politician best known today for the bon mot “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Which, I think, sums up GoodOmens!God rather well. Her flat affect comes straight from Frances McDormand; sometimes stunt casting is just miscasting.
> 
> The characterization of That Sort Of Sound was inspired by Spellbound’s fanvid “[Rebel Just For Kicks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYrfgjhDaWQ),” which has an entire howlingly funny section dedicated to it.


	2. Her Strong Suit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> God doesn't deserve the time of day from Aziraphale. Crowley questions the angel's willingness to help Her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale agree that Her relationship with them has been abusive (not to mention the behavior of their reporting chains). Please don't read if this will distress you.

“I wouldn’t do it,” Crowley grumbled, shoulders hunched to his ears, hands shoved into his pockets. “Don’t see why you’re even thinking about it.”

“I told you,” the angel said peevishly, “I really feel I must.” The fingers of one hand turned and tugged at the gold pinky ring on the other.

“Yeah, you’ve said that any number of times, angel, but what you haven’t said is _why_.”

“You and your questions!” Aziraphale snapped. Crowley flinched visibly, and his next steps carried him a little apart from the angel. “Oh, darling,” Aziraphale sighed. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“And I’m not the boss of you, angel. Shouldn’t go acting like it.”

Aziraphale held out the hand nearer Crowley. “Friends?”

Crowley took it. “Always. Lunch?”

The angel’s expression melted into an ethereal smile. “A healthy lunch for everyone!” he declared, and the mimicry was fond.

Crowley steered them into a reliable, unfussy Turkish bistro bright with coloured lanterns, not far off their way back to the bookshop. They were speedily seated in a quiet corner, and Crowley delighted the proprietor by waving away the menus with a “Just bring us what’s good today, yeah? And a bottle of sancerre.”

They sat without speaking, Crowley staring into space, Aziraphale twisting his pinky ring again while studying the demon’s graceless sprawl. “She hurt you horribly,” the angel said at last, nearly in a whisper. “Believe me, my dear, I don’t forget.”

“’S not that, that was an age of the world ago,” Crowley waved it off. “You said it yourself: She ignored you, angel, when you needed Her. Not a sign, not a word. If that’s not enough, She let those feculent wankers Upstairs walk all over you — let ‘em try to murder you!”

“Well, it’s not as though I’d ever be Her chief concern, Crow —“

The demon’s eyeroll and accompanying growl could have leveled mountains. As Soho boasted no mountains, they only changed all the blue hanging lanterns to a brooding dark red. “She marks the fall of a sparrow,” he minced, tilting his head mockingly from side to side, “but She can’t be arsed to answer you? Nothing against sparrows, sparrows’re great, snakelets with wings, they are — but that’s bollocks. She _neglected_ you, angel.”

The wine and two plates of savoury-looking meze arrived then, giving Aziraphale a moment to think while Crowley did the ceremonial tasting and accepted the bottle. Aziraphale shifted spoonsful of hummus and baba ghanouj and m’hamara to his own plate, returned the spoons with their handles pointing toward Crowley, and said, “You’re right, my dear.”

“I am? Er, ‘course I am.”

“You nearly always are, you know. You’ve always seen the world far more clearly than I.”

Crowley screwed up his face. “Laying it on a bit thick there, aren’t you?”

“Not at all!” Aziraphale protested. “Here, have a borek, they smell delightful. And the m’hamara is lovely, the walnuts must be just off the tree, none of that off note you sometimes get. You told me the humans didn’t need us to do good or evil, and you were right. You told me the Antichrist could be influenced, and you were right, even in a different way than you meant. You told me Upstairs wouldn’t listen, and you were right. Now you’re saying that She is terribly dangerous and capricious, and of course you’re right.” The angel indulged in a pita triangle that tidily held a goodly amount of baba ghanouj.

“Buuuuuuut…?”

Aziraphale made the most childish face he could while managing a mouthful of delicious puréed aubergine. Crowley sniggered unrepentantly, though the angle at which he held his head suggested rather the opposite of scorn. “Well,” the angel said when he could, dabbing at his lips with his serviette, “what if She is like the Antichrist? Susceptible to influence, I mean, in addition to capricious and dangerous.”

“ _Ngk_.” Crowley looked as though he had swallowed an entire borek points-outward. “I clearly haven’t drunk enough for this.” He emptied his wineglass, to make his point.

“She told us She had no plan. That at least suggests Her mind can change.” 

“Agnes Nutter’s book _suggests_ —“

“That the directions She sets off in can be altered. Or we’d not be sitting here, Crowley!”

“Assumes they weren’t conspiring. If I’d a mind to conspire, Agnes Nutter’d be top of my co-conspirator list. Real talent for conspiracy, her. Died to blow a conspiracy up, in the end.”

“I don’t think the accumulated evidence points to collusion; do you? Truly?”

“Mmmmmmnaaaaaaaaaah, s’pose not. She said She’d no plan, and that includes Agnes’s.” He topped off the angel’s glass, then refilled his own, tossed it off, and set the glass down a good deal too hard. “She _said_ She’d no _plan_!”

“Yes,” the angel answered, making a dismal moue as he reached for the last borek, “yes, quite.”

“She let you and the humans and — and everyone go through all that, and there’s nothing at the end of it?”

“She tore you to pieces and took parts of you away and reshaped you, and She made _fun_ of you for what She did to you, and if we heard Her right there was no purpose to it whatever.” The angel leaned back to let a salmon filet be laid before him. Crowley slumped, leaving plenty of space for a well-grilled lamb kofte. The server, reading their joint distress, made herself discreetly scarce. “At least,” Aziraphale ventured timidly, “you know now it wasn’t you? Or anything about you?”

“Almost rather it was,” Crowley muttered. “Feel all — all like your hat when Harry’s not in it.” The angel lifted his eyebrows in rueful accord, and took a bite of salmon. Crowley watched gastronomic delight spread over Aziraphale’s face, and felt a little better at the angel looking the way the angel _should_ look. He speared one of his kofte on his fork and levered it to the side of Aziraphale’s plate. Aziraphale twinkle-eyed his gratitude and willingly tasted it, nodding his approval. Crowley took a bite of another himself, to keep the angel company. Then he sighed. “Still don’t see why you want to listen to Someone like that.”

Aziraphale tried a different tack. “Well, really, where’s the harm?”

Crowley set his left hand on the table, palm up. “Hand.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Put down the cutlery — temporarily, I promise — and give me your _hand_ , angel.” Puzzled but trusting, Aziraphale set knife and fork neatly against his plate and laid his right hand in Crowley’s. The long tapered fingers of the demon’s other hand took delicate hold of the angel’s signet ring, gently shifting it a little way toward his fingertip. Underneath where it had lain, the skin was angrily inflamed, one or two tiny welts bearing mute witness. “There. That’s the harm.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale blankly. “I hadn’t realised — well, it’s nothing to be concerned about, just a scratch or two, had worse papercuts really.”

“Don’t —“ Crowley cut himself off, instead directing the most gossamer of healing touches to the angel’s finger before nudging the ring back into place. “She doesn’t have to hurt you for you to hurt, Aziraphale. Now eat your salmon.” Aziraphale did as he was told. Chin in hand now, Crowley watched the play of expression over the angel’s guileless features. “You stubborn bastard,” he said resignedly when the angel chased down the last of the salmon with a sip of sancerre. “You’re still going to do it.”

“I fear so, my dear. May I explain, or had you rather not hear?”

“Whatever She wants from you, She’ll not thank you for it, you know.”

“I must admit, gratitude is not one of Her strong suits. If I thought I could earn it —”

“No, no, no, no, _no_ , angel —”

“I know, darling! I wouldn’t want you changed, not in the slightest!” Aziraphale’s left hand stole toward the ring on his right again, but stopped at Crowley’s meaningful glare over the rim of his sunglasses. “But I can’t help wondering if She could give you back — if She could love you again, as I do.” The angel’s eyes spoke entire leatherbound double-elephant-folio _volumes_ on how much love he believed Crowley deserved.

“If that’s why you’re doing this, I swear to Someone, Aziraphale —”

“It’s not.”

Crowley threw up his hands. If they had had a deck of cards in them, he would have wallpapered the entire bistro. “Well then, we’re back to my original question! Why, angel? _Why_?”

“For the world,” the angel answered stoutly.

“For the wo — bugger that!”

“Rather not,” said Aziraphale mildly. “You heard Her; She isn’t on anyone’s side. If you’re right about the next big dust-up, and as I believe I recently remarked you have been right about a good many things, isn’t it my bounden duty to try to recruit Her to ours?” He took a decisive sip of wine, feeling he had earned it.

“‘Cos we did so brilliantly at that with Warlock.”

Aziraphale acknowledged the hit with a tap of two fingers over his heart. “Warlock knew we loved him, at any rate,” he said. “Still knows it, unless I misread the direction on that rather tempting-looking box that left your flat not long since.”

“Well, I —” and, caught out, Crowley’s diction unraveled into more of _that_ sort of sound.

The angel took pity on him. “I miracled a pot-plant kit into it,” he confided. “Daisies, they’re always cheerful.”

“’Course you did,” groaned Crowley, rubbing his furrowed forehead. “Aziraphale, how can you think this will work?”

“Well, for one thing, you haven’t said it won’t — you’ve only said you’re worried for me,” said the angel with brittle briskness. “And I — well, I daresay this will sound dreadfully foolish to you, darling, but even so: I feel She needs me to look after Her.”

“You think our Mother needs you to mother-hen Her? That’s arse-over-tip, angel. And why you? She’s got a pincushion full of angels Upstairs, slavering to lick Her boots.”

“You know them,” said Aziraphale quietly, “and so do I. They don’t have what She needs. They all still have their swords.”

“You never needed a sword! You’re stronger than Samson with a floor-length mullet, angel! But you need — you need — bless it, Aziraphale!” Crowley shoved his chair back from their table. “What Upstairs did to you. What She let them do. Be another age of the world ‘fore I forget that. But lately, you’ve almost been at peace. So close! I could see it! And She turns up for ten minutes and you’re a basket of raw nerve-ends again. I won’t have it!”

“You needn’t take part, my dear, if it will upset you so,” said Aziraphale. “It will be another age of the world before I forget what She did to you, what She allowed; I see the old, old hurts in you every day. I can’t change that any more than you can make time run backwards. We are what we are.” He looked up, meeting the abyssal pits of Crowley’s sunglasses. “But perhaps I can _do_ something. Perhaps I can change what She does from now on. Perhaps no one else suffers as you did, as so many have. Wouldn’t that be worth a few nerve-ends?”

“Well, bless my soul,” was all Crowley could find to say, staring into the fathomless sea of the angel’s eyes.

“It’s not so bad when you get used to it,” the angel countered wryly. “Dessert?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first chaptered fic, and I'm only partly sure where I'm going with it. I do know the philosophical questions I want to opine about, but whether I get there — much less how — is a bit of a mystery still. Like Aziraphale, I'll figure it out as I go.


	3. En passant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley has an unfavourable encounter with a parcel She sent to Aziraphale. Also with a wall.

England was bad at good weather. Good weather had never been one of England’s specialities. England’s weather could be so interminably awful that even Aziraphale’s sunny post-Apocalypse disposition found itself murmuring about Costa Rica or New Zealand. At these times, Crowley knew to invite the angel casually to his flat, where he could turn the sunlamps around his plants up a bit. Even angels without the least slightest inclination to serpent-nature basked now and then, it turned out, in their foursquare stubbornly human-shaped way. Not that Aziraphale ever admitted (or, perhaps, realised) that basking was what he was up to, but Crowley never put the boot in about it, not least because he rather enjoyed watching the angel take deep blissful sniffs of the moist perfumed air in the conservatory with coat and waistcoat off and shirt-sleeves rolled up.[1]

They were on their way to another basking session, a dismal grey fog having claimed London as its own over the last several days, when Crowley, his eyes on Aziraphale, tripped over a parcel outside the door to his flat and narrowly[2] avoided a spill, all four limbs flailing and windmilling until the wall[3] whacked him a good one on the back of the head and he sagged against it.

Aziraphale didn’t put the boot in about it, but then, the angel rarely did these days unless provoked. “My dear boy, are you hurt?” he exclaimed, hurrying toward Crowley to lend his sturdy arm.

“Sssss. No, ’m fine, angel. Sssssssssssss.” Crowley’s corporation’s skull had somehow never been quite the same after Hastur’s lead pipe, and by ill-luck[4] the wall had hit him on precisely the right — or, rather, wrong — spot. He let Aziraphale slip one arm behind his back, and leaned into the sustaining solidity of the angel’s corporation.

“You are not fine,” Aziraphale declared, in a voice brooking no argument. “Let’s get you in and sitting down so I can have a look at you, there’s a good fellow.”

Crowley found himself moving toward his flat at a respectable rate of speed without actually exerting any will in the matter. His blurred vision nonetheless caught a glance of the object that was the root cause all this. “Wossat?” he asked. “Thing. Tripped me up. That. Smells of — smells odd.” It smelled properly _maternal_ , was what it smelled, and _maternal_ was not a smell Crowley trusted.

“It’s a parcel, I’ll fetch it in once you’re settled, now come along at once, you fiend!” Helpless to dissent — the angel didn’t know his own strength — Crowley found himself marched through the door of the flat and forcibly seated on the corner of his desk. Aziraphale’s warm hands wasted no time patting over Crowley’s head seeking any injury, stopping when the demon yelped. “Sorry, sorry dear boy, you’ve quite the goose-egg starting here, give me a moment…” 

How long a moment was exactly Crowley never had been sure despite his mastery of time-stops, but he _was_ sure it took Aziraphale more than a moment to fuss over his occiput. Still, he thoroughly welcomed the disappearance of the uncomfortable pressure just over where his neck began, as well as the de-blurring of his vision[5] and the reconnection to his limbs. “Tickety-boo,” he said, the jest as gentle as the angel’s hands had been. “’Preciate it, angel.” He leaned forward for a kiss.

“Of course, darling,” Aziraphale said, steadying the demon with hands on his waist as their lips met. Once they surfaced, he said, “Now, you ought to sit or lie down somewhere comfortable for a bit while I watch you. Blows to the head can be dreadfully tricky. Throne, sofa, or bed?”

Under most circumstances, “bed” with an appreciative leer would have been Crowley’s immediate answer, but with a suspiciously maternal-smelling parcel and the lingering effects of a forestalled concussion troubling him, he elected the sofa. Aziraphale installed him there, on his side and with the softest, most angelic of miracled pillows behind his head for safety’s sake. The angel then bustled into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea and pour Crowley a glass of water.[6]

Smiling to himself at the angel’s newfound familiarity with his flat, Crowley drank a sip or two to be polite,[7] then settled back into a light doze as the angel split his attention between the book in his hand and watching Crowley straitly for any complications from his mishap. 

“Oh!” the angel exclaimed out of nowhere, bolting upright and abruptly awakening Crowley. “Oh dear, I quite forgot! Your parcel, darling, I should go retrieve it, I’m so sorry.”

Crowley emitted a particularly palatalized variant of _that_ sort of sound. “Open it out there for me, will you, angel?” he asked. “Don’t trust it. Sitting out there all innocent like that, just waiting its chance to leap out onto an unsuspecting demon’n send him hurtling into the nearest wall.”

Aziraphale took this as typical Crowleian exaggeration, as Crowley had hoped he would, rather than atypical Crowleian dread. “As you wish, my dear,” he said, larding each word with dripping irony, and went to the door, wedging it open with a small miracle. “Oh, _indeed_ ,” he said as he picked it up.

“Don’t tell me, let me guess. Mother’s sent me a flaming bag of poo. You’d think Hastur’d have been enough. I’ll have to add on a closet for ’em all, at this rate.”

“Mother, return direction The Empyrean, you’re quite right,” said the angel abstractedly. “I shall have to have words with International Express. It’s addressed to _me_ , Crowley.”

“It’s _what_?”

“Addressed to me, here. Well, it feels innocuous enough.” A rustle of butcher paper, then, “It’s a book.”

“Inventive,” returned Crowley drily. “But it could have been anything. What’s that chess move? Weird one, have to read the rules every time.”

“A blank book. And chess was one of your lot’s, if I recall correctly. Truly fiendish game, and that’s before we consider —”

“Oi, angel, _told_ you, I had nothing to do with Bobby Fischer.”

“So you’ve said, often enough that I begin to wonder what you’re hiding,” retorted the angel, but his heart was not in it. “The book appears quite harmless. May I come in again, darling? I can’t say I’m fond of shouting at you from the corridor.”

“Yes, all right,” Crowley grudgingly muttered. “Just — come over the threshold and stop there a moment.” Aziraphale did as instructed, no longer mocking; this game Mother was playing was truly odd, and he could not blame Crowley for feeling skittish. Nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen for quite a few moments, however long a moment was. At length, Crowley sighed and gestured the angel in. 

Aziraphale took a moment to kneel by the sofa, check Crowley’s eyes, and skate gentle fingers over the back of his head. “Any ringing in the ears, my dear? Dizziness? Nausea?”

“No, no, and no. ’M _fine_ , angel.”

“Yes, well, irritability is another symptom, but with you I’m not sure I could tell.” Satisfied for the nonce, Aziraphale resettled himself in the armchair that Crowley had seen in an antique-shop window and impulse-purchased for his flat because it was near-twin to the one the angel typically occupied in his bookshop. The angel ran his fingers over the faintly-fuzzy flowered cloth cover of the book She had sent, let it fall open[8] in his hands, and began turning the empty pages.

“En passant!” Crowley snarled, snapping his fingers unmagically. “That’s it.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Chess move. Pawn jumps two squares out of the scrum, sits off to the side, no other pieces in sight ’cept an enemy pawn that’s not in position, thinks it’s all safe, then _wham_ , captured.” Crowley smote one fist into the other palm by way of illustration. “Out of bloody nowhere! Like that book!”

“Well, it’s not as though a book could —” and language suddenly abandoned Aziraphale entirely, leaving behind a long sigh through an “oh” sound and eyes the shape and colour of Wedgewood saucers. 

“What? Angel, what?” It was Crowley’s turn to bolt upright, a decision he promptly regretted to the tune of a pained hiss. Still, he managed to withdraw his hand into his shirtsleeve and bat the book out of the angel’s grasp onto the floor. He seized the angel’s wrists on his second flailing try, turning his hands palm-up. “Hellfire? Acid? Methanol? What, angel?”

Aziraphale swatted Crowley’s hands away. “Nothing of the kind! Just had a bit of a surprise! Sit back down before you pass out, you ridiculous demon. And you’d better not have hurt the book.” He slipped out of the chair to the floor to retrieve it.

“Oh, not the _booooook_ ,” Crowley mocked, crabby with relief. “I only thought She might’ve had a go at you, angel, but of course it’s the _boooooooook_.”

“She hasn’t. She promised She wouldn’t. It’s an invitation, look.” Aziraphale resumed his chair, book in hand, and opened it to the first page in front of Crowley.

There was writing there now.

> The Principality Aziraphale,  
>  formerly Guardian of the Eastern Gate,  
>  now on Your Own Side,  
>  is invited to a chat with his Mother,  
>  at whatever day, time, and place he shall specify.

As they watched, another line of text uncurled itself onto the page: “The Serpent Crowley, the Original Tempter, now on Your Own Side, is also invited… if he wishes.”

Crowley’s first impulse was to see how Aziraphale was taking it. The first shock past, the angel only looked pensive. “It’s really rather polite, in its way,” he said. “No surprises. Letting me set the time and place. Inviting you, but not insisting.”

“What’s polite about leaving a parcel addressed to you outside my door where it’ll make me knock my head in?”

“I was wondering. Perhaps She merely knew we’d both be here today.”

“Well, that’s not creepy or intrusive at all, then,” Crowley grumbled.

“Or maybe — and on reflection I do think this likely — She wanted to be sure not to send me anything, or talk to me, behind your back. You _are_ very protective of me, darling. She must know.”

“She doesn’t _care_.”

“She might. Are you coming along?”

“Yeah, might ’s well,” Crowley muttered sullenly, hating the idea of his Mother chatting up his angel as much as ever.

Aziraphale wisely did not pick this particular fight. “Very well,” he said, “then we’ll wait a few days, be sure you’re back in tip-top condition.” A milk-white feather already sharpened to a fine nib and a full inkwell found themselves, rather to their surprise, on the end table by the angel’s chair. “How about that dreadful snobbish resto you hate, the one Famine got his hands into? I shouldn’t like us to go anywhere you actually enjoy.”

“Good choice, then.” The place had had the unmitigated gall to disappoint Crowley’s angel. Crowley would have cursed it root and branch if Aziraphale had not dissuaded him because of the sweet smiling coat-check girl. “S’pose She can pay what they charge for half an egg white and a carrot peeling.”

“You and I will go someplace nicer after, my dear.” Aziraphale’s nib moved beautifully across the page as he wrote their acceptance. “I’ll make all the reservations, so you needn’t be troubled with it. There. Done.” He closed the book carefully and tucked it into an inner pocket of his coat, where it nestled as though happy to be stored there.

“Wahoo,” Crowley mumbled.

“Oh, darling. It will be fine. _We_ will be fine, I’m quite sure.” 

Crowley’s head gave a sudden throb, so sudden he did not manage to conceal his wince from the angel. “Long’s _you’re_ sure.”

The angel slipped his arms out of his coat preparatory to joining Crowley on the sofa to rub his temples. “White-square bishop,” he said. “I’ll keep you out of the queen’s clutches, my dearest and most knightly pawn.”

The demon relaxed into his angel’s beloved touch. Just before dozing off again, he said, “At least I can see Her coming. No en passant.”

1. The tartan bowtie always stayed. One couldn’t have everything. [return to text]  
2. Crowley’s corporation did everything narrowly. [return to text]  
3. Naturally it was the wall’s fault. Crowley never hit anything while in motion. [return to text]  
4. Or fate. Only Agnes Nutter’s second book would have known for sure, and it was ash on the breeze. [return to text]  
5. Such as it was. Snake vision, unlike some other aspects of his damnation, had been a genuine punishment. [return to text]  
6. Not this time a euphemism, since the demon had suffered an injury. Aziraphale poured actual water, not eau de vie, eau de villée, eau gazeuse, eau pétillant, or eau minérale, and certainly not eau de parfum. No, of course he did not _bless_ it, what do you take him for? [return to text]  
7. Politeness was a human thing; certainly neither Heaven nor Hell ever bothered with it. Crowley could therefore let himself be polite, and could even allow the angel to remark on it. [return to text]  
8. Not too far open. Aziraphale held strong views on those who stressed the spines of books. [return to text]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can’t explain this except to say that I had a chapter full of signs and portents and whatnot in mind, but the boys insisted on slapstick and chatter. Oh, well, the portents will keep.


	4. The Angel, Islington

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Creation was a game. Were all the beings within it merely players? Were they even players?

Crowley took shameless advantage of his greater height to hold the book Mother had given Aziraphale beyond the angel’s reach. “You changed your mind and proposed a new place, She accepted, why d’you want to change it again now?”

“I can’t take the Lord Almighty to a common chain pub, Crowley! Never mind its _name_!”

“Why not?”

“It’s — it’s —” Disconsolate, Aziraphale gave up trying for the book and rocked back on the heels of his natty brown brogues. “It’s terribly presumptuous, if you _must_ know.”

“You think She won’t like it.” The final word was a last-moment substitution for _you_ , which Crowley suspected would wound the angel worse than a sword flaming in hellfire. For good measure, the demon put on his best angel-indulging pout.

The angel had been wibbling ever since Crowley had shown him The Angel’s menu on his mobile, and the angel never _could_ easily stop one of his wibbly fits. “She’ll think I chose it as a deliberate gesture of disrespect! And then we’ll be off on the wrong hand altogether.”

Aziraphale’s grasp of idiom, like his grasp on fashion, lagged the present considerably, though even that could not explain all the malapropisms[1] Crowley was so practised in resolving. The root cause was neither obstinacy (whatever Crowley thought) nor lack of interest. Indeed, the problem was that Aziraphale loved language a bit too much, always had — over the centuries, he had thrown himself into any and all languages that came his way. Though he preferred written languages, he did not at all disdain humanity’s oral traditions — was, in fact, the last repository of a good many. In addition, he had learnt from Sir William Jones himself to see languages as _systems_ , which unfortunately inclined him to misplace individual items of vocabulary. 

“Wrong _foot_ ,” corrected Crowley, rolling his head since his snake-eyes did not roll well. “We’ll be wrongfooted, you’re saying. Hand _off_ that ring, angel.”

Aziraphale obediently stopped twisting his pinky ring, though that did not entirely dampen his physical wibbling, uneasy micro-motions of hands and head he only dared show when with Crowley, or one of the rare humans he trusted implicitly. “Well — yes, I suppose that is what I’m saying.”

Folding his arms over his narrow chest and tucking the book between his left arm and side, Crowley levelled a serious stare at the angel. “Only happens if we let it.”

“I can’t fathom what you mean,” the angel said fretfully.

“We walk in like we own the place and it’s our favourite, what’ll She say? ‘Ooo er, Aziraphale, I created this like I created everything else but it’s just too downmarket for the likes of Me.’ She can’t do that! It’d be admitting She was wrong about something, and She _never_ does that.”

“Well, except that She has, Crowley!”

The only answer Crowley could find to that was to set the book down and wrap his arms tight around his wibbly angel. “Discombo — disconcer — messes with your mind, that does. But we made it to the other side of Armageddon, angel. You want to do this, so we will _do_ this.”

——

The Angel, Islington was too clean and brightly-lit to be a dive bar and too tatty to be much of anything else. This was the sort of tourist trap Crowley would goose some Heaven-like corporate dingbat human into designing when he’d a mind to generate disproportionate amounts of low-level sin: tables too small and too high, chairs and stools absurdly uncomfortable, loud repetitive beeps and dings echoing from the arcade-style gambling and trivia games. 

Crowley clapped Aziraphale on the shoulder and strode in, grinning. “Great choice, angel! This place looks like all kinds of fun.” In one tiny, resentful corner of his no-longer-angelic soul, he exulted that She was having to endure this jumped-up dumpster.

“I don’t like the way you say the word ‘fun,’ Crowley,” Aziraphale complained. “The last time I remember you saying it involved _howitzers_.”

That earned the angel an aggravated Crowleian growl. “ _Machine guns_ , Aziraphale, c’mon, and you know perfectly well not one single human so much as stubbed a toe. Anyroad, no weapons in this place other than probably the food. She here yet?”

Aziraphale, of course, had much the better eyesight of the two of them. “Yes, I believe She’s in that booth there.”

“Swanky! Let’s go pay our disrespects.”

The angel chose to believe he had misheard, and led the way. “Er, hello,” he said with an embarrassed little finger-wave as they approached the table. “Lovely to see You, Mother. May we?” At Her unsmiling nod, Aziraphale slid into the booth bench across from Her, repressing a grimace at the unpleasantly tacky feel of the hard-wearing fabric over what served for a cushion, and folded his hands tidily in his lap. Crowley simply dropped into a crooked sprawl of bony limbs on the remaining space on the bench.

She had gone to a bit more sartorial trouble this time: a tasteful jacket dress in Marian blue over kid-leather ankle boots that were very nearly chic. The dress clashed horribly with the lime-green bench covers in their booth, but one could not have everything. Her earrings were matte silver, and mismated: a top hat in one ear, an antique automobile in the other. 

“Aziraphale, Crowley,” She said, mundanely sliding the menu across the table to them. “Thank you for coming.”

“Delighted for the opportunity,” said Aziraphale, to cover whatever the demon was muttering under his breath. “Have You ordered?”

“Not yet. Take your time. You may order for Me, if you like, Crowley.”

“Right, well, sure,” the demon sputtered, “’cos You’re such a lady. Is there a get-out-of-Hell-free card in it for me if I get it right?”

“I just thought you might think it funny to order Me something disgusting,” She replied, unruffled.

Crowley wrinkled his nose. “No fun if You’re _expecting_ it. Anyroad, most of the food here’ll be disgusting, take Your pick.”

The angel, meanwhile, had perched his reading glasses on his nose to peruse the admittedly dispiriting options. “Oh, I daresay the eggs Benedict would be acceptable, if not outstanding,” he said. “Only so much one can do to ruin a poached egg.”

When their server turned up, a polite young person who might have sat for a portrait of Uriel if Uriel happened to be too busy to, Crowley insisted on cider over tea for the table — “there isn’t a proper cuppa here, angel, best not try it” — and unenthusiastically ordered himself a small beans on toast he planned to give to Aziraphale, who ordered the mushroom Benedict for himself and the regular Benedict for their Mother.

“So,” said the angel after the server left, steepling his fingers against his chest to still them. “We’re here to listen to You, Mother; would you care to begin?”

Crowley threw up one alarmed hand, too late to forestall Her deadpan, “Let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very fine place to start.” 

Aziraphale frowned at the demon until he stopped groaning. “By all means, Mother. What — what was it like, before?”

“Transcendentally boring,” She answered. “That’s why I started Creation: to have something to do.”

“Oh, right,” Crowley began, but Aziraphale set one hand over his under the table and squeezed warningly. Crowley let his words trail off.

“Do go on, Mother,” said Aziraphale, “and don’t mind Crowley; he scoffs at everything.”

“I don’t,” She said without so much as turning her pale eyes on Crowley, and the bland way She said it sent existential chills through every last crevice of Crowley’s bendy bones. Of course the demon She cast out could not matter to Her, Crowley had never thought otherwise, but Her flat detachment put him — not in his place, that was nominally Hell, but in some no-place where the Serpent of Eden and Original Tempter was absolutely no one, where he did not and could never matter to _anyone_ , ever. 

Without meaning to, Crowley sidled a little closer to Aziraphale, suddenly craving the warm assurance of the angel’s corporation. He immediately hated himself for it; he’d come to lend his angel a shoulder, not the other way ’round. Far from minding, however, Aziraphale mirrored his movement, one solid thigh nudging against his. The angel looked oddly calm — not the anxiety-masking nervelessness Crowley associated with visits from Gabriel, more the concentration needed to evaluate prophecies or mend a tricky binding.

“You were saying, Mother?” Aziraphale prompted, politely.

“I was bored, so I Created,” She repeated. “What do you do when you’re bored?”

“Well,” said the angel with a mischievous sidelong glance at Crowley, “ _he_ does dastardly deeds, gluing coins to the pavement and dunking ducks and such —“

“And _he_ goes looking for more books, like he hasn’t already got enough to fill a high-rise hotel.”

“Oh, as though you’ve never trucked plants into your flat by the barrowful, you fiend!”

“Oi! Do we need to discuss your Shoes Through the Ages collection?”

“I play games,” She interrupted the escalating bickering. Both of them subsided, sheepishly on Aziraphale’s part, sulkily on Crowley’s. “With myself, in the time before, but when that got old I made Creation to be a new game board and tokens.”

Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hand again before the demon could explode at the word _tokens_. “How did You decide what to make?” the angel asked.

She shrugged. “I like patterns. I made patterns. Day and night. Land and sea. Angels, in patterns themselves, to make more patterns. But angels had their own ideas that weren’t My patterns. I hadn’t expected that.”

“What ideas were those?” The angel’s attention was still fully fixed on Her, though his warning hold on Crowley’s hand under the table was softening into a gentle interlacing of fingers.

“Colours in the stars. Sunspots and flares and prominences. Planets and comets and asteroid belts. Nebulae in the galaxies. All of them were terrifically untidy, not one bit symmetrical. They didn’t make _sense_. None of that was in the plans.” Crowley, interested in spite of himself, felt Aziraphale’s leg muscles tense and ran his thumb carefully over the angel’s hand. 

“Did You find that… objectionable?” Aziraphale asked, giving no sign of noticing Crowley’s gesture. They both knew what the angel was truly asking: _was that why Crowley Fell?_

She broke the intense gaze She and the angel had been sharing to look off toward the kitchen, whence their server was approaching with a laden tray. “I meant to. I like patterns. I wanted to see my patterns. But when I looked, what I saw was — pleasing to Me. I don’t know why, but it was. So I let it be.”

Conversation stalled as their food — what unsuccessfully attempted to pass for food — was laid before them. Aziraphale sighed disconsolately through his nose at his plate, but let go Crowley’s hand and bravely picked up his fork, as did She. After the first bite, the angel set down his fork with the tiniest of disenchanted coughs. “What did You do then? After the stars and before Eden, I mean.”

She appeared to object less than the angel to the food before Her, tucking in willingly enough. “I watched the patterns, and how they changed.”

“Oh! Like a kaleidoscope!” exclaimed Aziraphale, brightening. “Oh, that’s rather lovely. I have an original Brewster somewhere or other, but it’s not as nice as the Busch I found in a jumble sale later — a Charles Busch in a jumble sale, imagine!”

She gave him a look that communicated without words exactly how little She could imagine a Charles Busch, whatever that was, in a jumble sale, whatever _that_ was. The angel abruptly dimmed. Crowley immediately resolved never to tease Aziraphale over his little knick-knacks again, despite knowing the resolution could only fail. “I’d like to see sometime, angel,” he said. “Didn’t know you had ’em.”

“I will be sure to rout them out of whatever trunk they’re in,” replied the angel gratefully. “With the rail lanterns, perhaps? Or my old cameras.” He shook himself out of his momentary reverie, remembering why they were there. “So sorry, Mother. What were we speaking of?”

“Patterns and rules,” she answered, after swallowing a bite of ham and egg.

“Right, right, of course. Did I hear correctly that the patterns in the stars were novel to You? Even though You made those who made them?”

“What I made, I know,” She said, “until it departs from how I made it.”

Crowley blinked. “You mean, You know us until we _change_?”

“I know you less the more you distance yourself from My making, yes.” She regarded Crowley coolly. “I made you twice, and lost touch with you both times.”

“A—and me, Mother?” Aziraphale squeaked. 

“I know you a little. You still guard, as I made you to do.”

“I see.” The angel was just wrongfooted enough to eat more of the rather traitorous Benedict before him. “I don’t know how to think about this, Mother. Would You _care_ to know us better?”

“I can’t. You are already made, and changed. How shall I know you, without remaking you?”

“Oh, well,” said Aziraphale, on surer ground now, “there’s many a way to get to know someone. Talking with them, working with them, learning their tastes, spending time together, helping them —“

“Biblically knowing them,” Crowley drawled, because some things tempt even demons.[4]

“Crowley!” The angel reddened, predictably yet adorably.

“Pass,” She said with a smirk.

“Right, now I’m curious,” said Crowley. “How well do You know the Archwanker Gabriel?”

“Fairly well,” She admitted. "Not, however, Biblically."

“So You _made_ him that way?”

“Evidently.”

“Think You owe all of Creation an apology, then,” Crowley muttered into his cider glass.

“Gabriel is… certainly very handsome,” Aziraphale said uncertainly, gaze shifting between Her and Crowley.

“No, now you stop with that, angel!” Crowley declared, narrowly missing his beans on toast with the fist he smacked into the table. “He’s a cold, vicious son of a —”

“Crowley!” gasped Aziraphale.

“— oh, fine, but he is and you know it, and it’s no surprise She still knows him, is it, then?”

“Perhaps not,” She said quietly, after a long moment punctuated only by incessantly discordant beeps from the games.

“Oh, dear,” said Aziraphale, wringing his hands. “Mother, that’s not — he didn’t mean —”

“Bloody well _did_ mean,” Crowley maintained. “Cold, cruel angels for a cold, cruel —”

“I think we had better let You go, for today,” Aziraphale interrupted desperately, lest She get any ideas about smiting mouthy demons. She had promised not to do so Herself, but the angel wasn’t sure She had promised not to tell someone else to do it.

“As you will,” She answered, mopping up the last of Her hollandaise with a bit of muffin. 

——

Aziraphale’s stride lengthened and quickened significantly past his wont as they departed The Angel, Islington. Crowley matched his steps to the angel’s without a word, respecting both his fear and his continued diligent concentration. At length, Aziraphale said, “Did She seem — off to you, somehow, dear boy?”

Crowley shrugged. “Can’t say as I ever made a study.”

Aziraphale made aimless motions with both hands through the air before him, his closest analogue to the demon making _that_ sort of sound. “She — I — I remember Her _voluble_ , don’t you? Long flowing sentences with lots of clauses and little fiddly bits in them. Always rather concrete, to be sure, but —”

The demon found himself nodding. “Barely got three words out in succession, She didn’t. Now you mention, it was a bit odd.”

“If She were a human, I’d have asked if anything had _happened_ to Her. It sounded like —”

“Shell shock,” Crowley suggested. They had both had rather more experience with war trauma, first- and secondhand, than they wished over the millennia. They knew how it manifested.

“Well, yes, rather, but what on earth or in the Empyrean or — or anywhere else could _do_ that to our _Mother_?”

“No idea, angel,” said Crowley grimly, “but whatever it is I think I don’t like it.”

——

[1] Actual solecisms were rare, though Crowley would never let Aziraphale live down the time they were in a college town in America to wile/thwart a bicycle race and the angel pronounced “Hoosier” to rhyme with “tarsier.” [2]

[2] Crowley never, ever knew when the angel truly did not know the correct pronunciation or idiom and when the angel was merely trolling him… though he had certain suspicions about “bouillabaisse.”[3]

[3] Aziraphale never, ever told Crowley that his intentional errors were made in the laudable hope of giving the often-discouraged demon something to crow over him with. [return to text]

[4] Such as plump, prim angels who run bookshops. [return to text]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter name taken from a property name in UK Monopoly. (Spot the game-token shout-outs! I squeezed in as many as I could manage. There have been... many game tokens in the history of the game.) Also a character name in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, also an actual chain pub next-door to Islington’s original Angel building, a pub whose menu’s motto is “do everything so none of it can be done well.” Description taken from photos online; sadly, I am not kidding about any of the fixtures, not even the lime-green bench covers, eesh.
> 
> Sir William Jones was not the first scholar to posit the existence of the Indo-European language family, but he does seem to be responsible for the idea catching on. Perhaps it took a small miracle! Other ideas Jones had sound as though they might have been instigated by a certain meddling demon, for that matter.
> 
> The bicycle race in Footnote 1 is the Little 500, and now you know where I went to undergrad. (I stayed in my dorm room or a computer lab or the library for Little 5 weekend. Wasn’t safe for a lone young woman — one can’t count on ethereal or occult beings stepping in to help one.)
> 
> For more on kaleidoscopes, see the [Brewster Kaleidoscope Society](https://brewstersociety.com/). If you are lucky enough to have a Charles G. Busch kaleidoscope, don’t put it in a garage sale; it may be worth quite a lot of money. (Aziraphale didn’t like the proprietors at the jumble sale in question, so his bastard side came out just long enough to pay the listed price and leave with his prize.)


	5. Poker Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After meeting with Her, Crowley needs a bath. So does Aziraphale, though for different reasons.

Crowley’s long sinewy fingers dug into the angel’s tight scalene muscles. Aziraphale made no sign of pain, only shifted his damp head a little against the demon’s shoulder and let his well-pruned fingers dabble the bathwater to stir up the rosemary-with-a-touch-of-lemon scent Crowley had carefully chosen as most likely to ameliorate the angel’s jumpiness after their brunch with Mother. 

Aziraphale wasn’t a hedonist exactly. Crowley had thought so for a good while — rather believed the Archwanker Gabriel _still_ thought so — but it wasn’t the right word. Heav — goodn — _creation_ knew Aziraphale waded through rivers of shit and blood when he had to, didn’t even blink at it as long as a human in need of righteous salvation or some other angelic blessing awaited him on the other side. Nor was Aziraphale the sort to sublimate everything to the pursuit of his pleasures. Orders first, always. Crowley had been on the wrong side of that choice often enough, in the before times.

No, in truth the angel was a _sensualist_ : the only angel in Heaven or out of it who took his corporation’s sensory capabilities seriously. Crowley had been delighted to discover that the arty or musical or foodie _non sequiturs_ the angel emitted now and then — “we had crêpes!” — were in actuality his memory garden, his sense-based mode of organising sixty centuries of experience. How often Aziraphale could still surprise him, even after those sixty centuries. Crowley loved it.

On the other hand, it also meant that Aziraphale’s worries had a way of working themselves into his corporation; the pinky-ring abrasions were the least of it. When they swapped faces the fateful day after the Acropperlypse, Crowley found himself horrified by the angel’s corporation’s knotted muscles, aching joints, and limited range of motion, so much a part of him that they had all been faithfully (so to speak) recreated by the Antichrist. How could Aziraphale even manage those darling little wiggles, kinked up and hurting as he was? It wasn’t to be borne.

Both of them had a solid experiential grounding in human anatomy. One couldn’t blend in with humanity, never mind endure untold numbers of the earth’s wars, famines, plagues, and other disasters, without picking up a thing or two. It only took Crowley every spare second[1] on YouTube for a mere two months after Laydownarmsageddon to swot up techniques from several different schools of massage. One concentratedly expensive morning in a high-end (how else?) medical-grade equipment store and an encyclopaedic self-care shop later, Operation Corporation commenced.

Aziraphale had fussed direly at first, partly because he couldn’t yet fully believe that Crowley’s otherwise unquestioned affection extended to his corporation (and oh, if Crowley ever got his hands on the Archwanker Gabriel, it wouldn’t be for therapeutic bodywork), partly because — well, much of what Crowley had to do _hurt_. Low lighting[2], string quartets, gentle scents, and enough warmth even for Crowley’s serpentine essence could not wholly mask that Crowley’s wiry hands were strong as steel cable and uncannily drawn to long-buried sore spots. In a surprisingly short time, however, the demon’s rather bruising treatment regimen had yielded results: the angel stretched more, moved more, and smiled more simply because his corporation ached less. In a delightfully virtuous circle, Crowley’s ministrations (so to speak) hurt less and comforted more, leading to even more angelic smiles and extra demonstrations of the angel’s rediscovered corporeal capacities.

All right, the long hot scented baths together might also have had something to do with the angelic smiles. Those remained well after the worst of the massages faded into the past; once Aziraphale discovered a new way to please his senses, he did not easily let go of it. He also lined the tub end with bath pillows for Crowley’s comfort, ignoring the demon’s open scoffs, and miracled the plumbing so that Crowley wouldn’t hit his head against the faucet. After their first post-miracle bath together, Crowley stopped scoffing. It _was_ even more pleasant to have a little padding behind him while the angel reclined against him.

Crowley brushed his lips against Aziraphale’s temple, murmuring “Tilt your head, angel. Both ways.” Aziraphale did as he was bid, the crown of his head brushing the demon’s chin. “Right. Now turn it.” The demon watched narrowly, then eased his hands into the pleasant water, satisfied with his work. “All right, angel?”

The angel hummed wordless assent. Knowing Aziraphale to be thinking hard, Crowley left him to it, closing his eyes and letting his own mind bask contentedly in their combined ease.

“We can rule out any threats to Her dominion over the universe, I suppose,” the angel sighed after a warm timeless time. “She would not tolerate it for an instant, and She can certainly stop it.” Crowley made a noncommittal noise, just enough to let Aziraphale know he was listening. “Threats to the world, to the humans, to Heaven or Hell — I have tried and tried, but I just cannot see how they would drive Her to apologise to us.”

“Not like She ever really cared,” Crowley said, so comfortable with his angel lying against him that the words held little bite.

“Just because you can’t feel Her Grace doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” the angel retorted, with indolent asperity.

“That’s not _love_ , angel,” Crowley sneered. “Seems to me ’s like Warlock’s parents. When he was cute, he got cooed over. When he shut up and did as he was told, he got presents and whatnot. Whenever he acted like an ordinary child, though!”

Aziraphale nodded against Crowley’s shoulder, having himself witnessed any amount of the Dowlings’ loveless and inconsistent behaviour toward their scion. “We were terribly fortunate Adam didn’t grow up with them. But you’re saying — and I am only countenancing this for the sake of argument, understand — you’re saying that Grace is approval, not love.”

Crowley ignored the angel’s reflexive defence of Her; one did not break free of Heaven’s thought patterns in a day, or even a few years. “Yup,” he plosived at last. “Go along to get along.”

“If one knows the rules to go along with.”

“Yup. We never really did, did we? Like a — a — you ever play in a mixed poker game, angel? ’Specially sozzled? Invented mixed poker, I did. Arguing about rules’s the best part.[3]” He sighed, deeply enough to move the angel’s corporation against his ribs. “But dealer wins. Dealer _always_ wins.”

“Because the dealer both chooses and enforces the rules, yes. That’s the dealer’s _job_ , Crowley.”

“’Cos the players agree on who’s the dealer, and even the dealer’s got rules. We didn’t agree, angel. We didn’t ever agree. She never even asked us to agree. No rules but Her rules; what was there to agree to?”

“Mm. And we never asked questions. I didn’t even think to. Why didn’t I think to, Crowley? Was I just too much the coward?”

“Angel,” said Crowley lazily in what Aziraphale privately thought of as his _lush voice_ , the voice he only used when he was exceptionally pleased with life. “What do you do when I ask you questions?”

“Well, I answer them, of course; whatever else is one to do with a question? Only sometimes I go on too long and you shush me.”

“Only when we’re talking to the humans. They don’t have all the time we do.” Crowley slipped both his arms between Aziraphale’s arms and body, letting his hands meet over the angel’s belly and squeezing a bit just because he could. “Even before the Great War, do you really think you’d have gotten an answer from Her?”

“I suppose not. And after, of course, asking was entirely unthinkable.”

“So why would you ever have bothered?”

“I suppose. The one time I did ask, I admit I was rather out of options. You couldn’t help, and Heaven _wouldn’t_ , and I — well, I was desperate.”

“We all do ridiculous things when we’re at our wits’ end and out of friends, angel. Doesn’t count.”

“Oh,” breathed Aziraphale suddenly, in the same tone of horrified enlightenment he had used over Agnes’s cocoa prophecy. “Oh, my.” And he fell silent and did not move, not so much as the tiniest little wiggle. 

Crowley too held still, still as only a snake could, arms still fast around his angel. Not even the surface of the water dared break the silence with the merest ripple. At length the demon’s curiosity got the better of him. “Er, Aziraphale? Still with us, then?”

Aziraphale startled, breaking the demon’s embrace and sending a plume of water over the side of the tub. “Oh, dear.”

“Never mind, angel, just — what?”

The angel’s hands lifted out of the water, palms out in placation. “Well, this is only a guess, you understand, and I shouldn’t like to ask directly, it would be terribly rude, but —”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaangel.”

“Well, what if we’ve been too fixated on — on material threats to Her? Not that I can blame us, when She threatens _us_ it’s always been decidedly material, but what if someone has actually made Her, well, _sorry_? Or at least inclined to believe She ought to be sorry.”

“Six thousand years and no one’s done it,” the demon said dubiously. “Why now? Who, now?”

“She is quite firm in Her opinions,” Aziraphale noted. 

“Set in Her _ways_ , angel, call a spade a spade, no wild cards in _this_ poker game.”

“Perhaps it simply took this long for someone to get through.”

“Adam,” said the demon.

“Jesus,” said the angel at the same time. “Or sweet Mother Mary, or perhaps even Eve.”

Crowley drove on, sputtering, “You think someone Up There’s staged an intra — inver — interwhatsit? With _Her_? And you think She _listened_?”

“How long was it before I listened to you, my dear boy?” said Aziraphale, very lovingly, rotating his shoulders with an ease Crowley approved to set his hands against Crowley’s dear demon face. “At long last I did. Anyroad, it fits the facts we have. I daresay it must have been quite a shock to Her, learning She was loved, but not — not quite —”

“Not approved of,” Crowley completed, scratching idly under his chin. “Thing is, angel, why us?”

Aziraphale shrugged and slipped his arms under the water again. “Why _not_ us? I know you believe She wronged us. If She has come to believe that too, the first step in amends is exactly what She did in the park. And we don’t know whom else She may have gone to.”

“ _That’s_ so.” Crowley considered this. “Be a long, long road if She wants to apologise to everyone.”

Aziraphale shifted a little, uneasily. “Crowley, if I’m right, what do I _do_?”

Crowley snaked his arms back around Aziraphale and dug his chin into the place where the angel’s shoulder met his neck, right over his scalenes. His _lush voice_ made another command appearance. “Be an angel, angel. Just be an angel.”

——

[1] There hadn’t been many. Spare seconds, that is. Each of them had been quite occupied seeing to the other’s needs, comforts, and continued existence. [return to text]

[2] LED lights, not candles. Crowley had quite gone off candles, considering, and Aziraphale enjoyed the shifting rainbow colours exactly as much as the guardian angel of Soho’s queer population should. [return to text]

[3] Of all the demon’s more ludic inventions, the only one to incite more rules-lawyering fights than mixed poker had been Scrabble. As most of Hell only cared for words when they were part of contracts, Crowley had never received the adulation for Scrabble that he thought he deserved. [return to text]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is in honor of “Barb,” who some fifteen years ago spent six months of massage-therapy appointments restoring my painful and nearly useless left arm to full function with utterly merciless granite hands. I went home after one memorable session one solid bruise from shoulder to wrist — but it worked, it all worked, and I am grateful.
> 
> I also fixed the footnote links in prior chapters, sorry about that. AO3's markup style is rather antediluvian. Let me know if anything is still broken, if you wouldn't mind.


	6. Truths and a lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale owns up, finally, and so does She, a little bit.

Aziraphale found Her some way inside the park gate he had specified in his invitation, sweeping Her foot idly over a rock that had once been part of a lodge, before the humans’ second Great War destroyed it. “Good afternoon, Mother,” he called from a little way away, not wishing to startle Her. “Quite a lovely day, is it not?”

“Good afternoon, Aziraphale,” she answered, bland as ever. “I did not _engineer_ it, if that is what you are asking.”

The angel stepped back without meaning to. “Oh, I assure You—”

“No Crowley today?”

Aziraphale’s head and shoulders shifted and tilted unhappily, his hands clasping tight together before him. “He sends his respe—er, rega—well, _greetings_.”

“Aziraphale.”

A sheepish blush spread over the back of the angel’s neck. He consciously parted his hands, remembering Crowley’s repeated injunctions about his pinky ring. “Yes, You are right. He did not care to come today. I do apologise, Mother. I meant no harm by the l-lie, just a small social courtesy, really.”

She looked him over, unruly crown of shining hair to well-kept brown brogues, Her pale eyes missing no detail. “You admit it? You did not admit of a lie before.”

Aziraphale ducked his head, but answered stoutly, “I am trying to behave better than I did then. And—I was terribly afraid, then, that You would hurt the humans even worse than You already had if I told You they had my sword. I thought—oh, it was foolish, but I did think that when You caught me in the lie—really it was rather obvious, I knew even then You would know—I thought perhaps You would punish me and let them be.”

“If I had punished you then, it would have meant Falling.”

The word lanced through Aziraphale’s chest like another sort of sword, but he was not a Principality for nothing. He let the sharp terror-edged pain wind through him on a long exhaled breath. “As long as we are being truthful, I rather thought so at the time, but You said we were to love the humans above ourselves. Shall we walk? The path toward the brook is quite pleasant; the birds adore it. Do You know, the humans have found over a hundred different kinds of bird in this park?”

“I did not know. This, too, has changed unrecognisably since first I made it.”

The angel found a smile somewhere, and shyly held out his elbow for Her to take. “Well, let me make it known to You again, then. I wonder how many birds we can find today?” He talked of the birds as they strolled together, pointing out the house sparrows and woodpigeons and starlings and wrens and magpies and thrushes as they heard or saw them; they paused at Adam’s Pond to look for waterfowl. He spoke about the feral parakeets particularly, and how they hadn’t really been released by that bebop musician Crowley favoured but wasn’t it odd how these stories did persist… 

Yet even Heaven’s most voluble angel could not rattle on forever without the least response. They had hardly turned their backs on Roehampton Café to strike out for the Pen Ponds when Aziraphale’s stream of gentle inconsequential talk dried up. Rather than babble, he stuck to the plan he and Crowley had worked out beforehand, simply holding his peace, letting the park and its small avian denizens distract him. After a time, he even relaxed into it, almost forgetting Her looming presence at his side. The weak sun dappled the late-summer leaves pleasantly, and the birdsong _was_ rather delightful, really.

Whatever theologians’ stance on omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence, one thing they had never accused Her of was omnipatience. “Where are we going, Aziraphale?” She asked, as the angel hesitated before a branching of the footpaths.

“Oh! Why, wherever You like, I’m sure, I was just wandering, no particular aim in mind, if You have one I’m sure I’ll manage to find it somehow—”

“I don’t. I thought you did.”

“I fear not. I thought Richmond Park would just be a pleasant place for a ramble-and-chat that won’t get under Crowley’s scales. Ought we go someplace else, then?”

She blew out a breath through Her nose. “No.”

“As You please.” Aziraphale chose the path toward White Lodge and Duchess Wood. A flash of bright green buzzed their heads, flitting over to a low-hanging branch. “Oh, look, one of the parakeets there!”

Her level gaze followed his pointing finger. “It doesn’t belong,” She said.

“That’s not its fault, surely,” he answered, with the briefest of glances upward. It had taken Crowley an entire _year_ to convince Aziraphale of that; if the demon had been there, his grin would have outshone the sun. “It is only trying to live.”

She made an indistinct sound nearly worthy of Crowley himself. They walked on through the mist-softened light, politely sidestepping humans on the shared paths, in a silence that stretched so long and uncomfortably that Aziraphale covertly clamped his teeth over his tongue to keep from breaking it. He’d practised tempting long enough; he knew perfectly well how to tempt someone to say more than they meant to, much more than they should. Silence was the soul of this particular temptation.

“Is there nothing more you wish to ask of Me, Principality?” She demanded at last.

“I promised to listen, Mother dear, as I am sure You recall,” said Aziraphale gently, patting Her hand where it lay in the crook of his elbow. “And I am happy to listen; I’ve learnt one can accomplish a great deal just by having a good listen.” He sighed. “I don’t care to go on chronologically, if You must know. We would reach some questions that—that hurt. Crowley has borne so much pain, living through Your—well, lack of plan. I shouldn’t like him to be made to relive it all, only because I made a promise to You.”

Silence fell again, and if the angel glimpsed the merest shadow of an unwonted qualm on his Mother’s face, he said nothing of it. Patiently, he named more birds in a low voice as they walked on, shading his eyes with his free hand from the brightening afternoon sun. He had all the time She had given him. He could wait.

“I never listened,” She said abruptly, Her voice startling a woodpecker off the trunk of a nearby oak. “I only spoke.”

“The Metatron always seemed quite proud of his place at your ear,” Aziraphale observed mildly.

“I never asked questions, except—except when—”

Ah, they were reaching the bone at last. Aziraphale took a deep breath, not minding how it stretched his lower waistcoat buttons. “Young Warlock used to call them ‘gotcha questions,’” he said. “An Americanism, no doubt. The sort of question that’s asked purely to put the boot in.”

“Like ‘What has become of your flaming sword, Aziraphale?’”

“Mm, something like that, yes.” The angel was dimly surprised at himself for how calmly he could speak of that moment of overpowering shame and terror. Thank Heav—Hell— _someone_ for Crowley.

“You were afraid.”

The angel’s free hand fluttered to his chest. “Oh, yes, enormously. And terribly worried I’d fallen short of Your expectations. I loved You so much, You see.”

“It wasn’t a real question. I thought it was funny to make you afraid.”

Aziraphale considered his reply carefully and at some length. “I never knew what was in Your mind then,” he said at last. “I never presumed to guess.”

Words fell like leaden pellets from Her thin, pale lips. “It was cruel. I—was cruel.”

“You might have made me Fall,” the angel pointed out. “But you didn’t.”

Steady grey eyes met the angel’s sky-blue ones. “It was almost as cruel to keep you always in fear of it. I knew that. I still did it.”

The intensity of Her—whatever this was; he could not quite call it “contrition” yet—made his heart pick up its old anxious dance. “Perhaps we might sit down?” he deflected. “Here is a pretty prospect, this bench here.”

She let him steer Her to the bench. “Aziraphale,” She said.

He turned his head toward her, fruitlessly willing the hammering of his heart to subside. “Yes, Mother?”

“I am sorry for My gotcha question, Aziraphale.”

The angel borrowed a leaf from his demon’s book. “It was a long time ago, Mother.”

“You cannot forgive Me. I understand.”

“I—want to. I will try to. But, Mother, please know that I love You.”

“You love Me, but cannot forgive Me.”

He was taking the measure of this conversation, of how She was picking Her way through it, seeking the right words like a bee seeking the best flower. The thought of Her in a bee shape brought an involuntary smile to his face, even a bit of relief to his overworked heart. “I do love You, yes, even with this and more between us.” Time to check their guess, his and Crowley’s. “If You wish to ask me about it, Mother, I promise I will answer truthfully.” 

She looked nonplussed and said nothing, Her pale gaze sliding off him into the grassland across the path. 

His smile broadened; he had it now. “And I will do my best not to be angry or upset by Your questions. I will even suggest what You might ask, if You like.”

“I have never asked real questions. Only gotcha questions.”

“No teacher like practising,” said one of Warlock’s erstwhile tutors. “Ask me something, Mother, do. Anything at all.” He shook out his hands as though readying them for his stage-magic act. 

“Why was I cruel?” She blurted out, Her voice suddenly so raw, so anguished, as to be near unrecognisable. 

Aziraphale’s hands dropped into his lap like shot birds. “Oh, Mother,” he whispered. “That is not a thing I can ever, ever know. None of us can. Only You. Only ever You.” Greatly daring, he reached for one of Her hands, one of the hands that shaped the universe, and held it. “I have been cruel too,” he said, “sometimes for little or no reason, and the regret sometimes fills me so full I could almost discorporate.”

“What do you do then?” Voice flat as ever, gaze flat as ever, but it was a _real question_ , and Aziraphale exulted in it. Temptation accomplished! 

“Often I read a book,” he answered, his thumb gently stroking Her knuckles. His wings itched, where they lay at an odd angle to reality, but he told them sternly to be still. “The humans are awfully good at depicting these things, I find. Sometimes I read philosophy, because it—well, it approaches cruelty and regret at arm’s length, so I can endure it no matter how I am feeling. Sometimes I read stories about humans who are cruel, or humans who feel regret. I feel not so alone then. Sometimes I read about humans who are good and kind. And lately, I talk to Crowley. Never tell him I said this, please, but he is tremendously kind when I am feeling poorly.”

“He listens to you.”

“He does, and I to him. I—I sometimes think, Mother, that You made so many of us not only to share Your glory, but because one alone could never endure Your creation. So much pain, so much cruelty, and not all of it from You by any means, nor even from Hell. But I can give my hurt to Crowley, who does not feel it as I would, and he can give me his, and so the hurt is lessened for us both.” The angel’s head tilted in sudden curiosity. “Did You make that? It has a feel of You about it.”

“If I did, I did not mean to,” She answered. “But I am not displeased at it.”

“It is lovely,” he assured Her, pressing Her hand once more. “How are you feeling, Mother?”

“I don’t know. I am not angry.”

Another guess about Her confirmed, this one Crowley’s. _All the self-knowledge of two-year-old Warlock_ , he had expostulated, and it surely did appear he was right once again. “Well, no matter, I was only curious,” Aziraphale said carefully. “You sounded distressed a little bit ago, that’s all.”

“Distressed,” She repeated.

“Yes. Distressed at how You had behaved.” Enough for one day, perhaps. Many world religions stretching back almost to Eden offered humanity’s best insights into how distressed deities might behave, and Aziraphale was here to forestall the end of the world, not invite it. “Do You know, I forgot all about something I truly adore when I am not quite the thing. Ice cream!”

She blinked, once more nonplussed. “Ice cream, Aziraphale?”

Sure of his ground now, he stood and offered Her his arm again. “Ice cream, yes! We could pop back up to Roehampton Café; they’ll have some. Shall we, Mother?”

* * *

Crowley’s yellow eyes took in the angel’s tired triumph in a glance. He stopped at the bar for drinks before slithering into the chair opposite Aziraphale. “All right, angel?” he asked, nudging a tall glass of the house brown his way. Wine was nice, but sometimes one just needed a good comforting ale.

“Tickety-boo, my dear; it all went just as you thought it might. And you?”

“The book… opened a few doors. We’ve a chat for Thursday week.”

“Oh, splendid! I always did want to meet them. And She didn’t suspect a thing, my dear.”

“Knew She wouldn’t. You are a right bastard.”

Aziraphale twinkled at him fondly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Silence filled this installment because silence has been filling my mind to overflowing for the last month or two, so I finally gave in and let it have free rein. Crowley is of course perfectly right about how to tempt someone into words. I do know what Crowley was doing behind Her back while Aziraphale distracted Her, though, so with any luck the next chapter won't be so delayed.
> 
> I did do a bit of Richmond Park homework. She and Aziraphale met inside the Sheen Gate, because how could I not, and the rock She was nudging was once part of the Sheen Lodge. (Absolutely no relation to our lovely Sheen that I could find.) None of the maps I saw had a distance key, though, and I've never been there, so if I have distorted the park’s geography horribly I am sorry.
> 
> As for the feral parakeets, the story goes that Jimi Hendrix released a breeding pair named Adam and Eve in London. It’s not true, but it’s still bruited about.


End file.
